If I were to tell you that a major political party had published a manifesto for this Westminster general election which was largely about a different election for a different parliament – an election which isn’t due for two years, and that in its promises which do relate to Westminster it does not actually exist as a distinct political party, you might think that it would be laughed off the stage of its launch event and a furious media would tear into it for misleading the public and wasting everyone’s time.
But of course that would only happen in a sensible grown up universe, not this infantilised corner of the multiverse in which the media in Scotland colludes in and enables the deceptions and misrepresentations of Keir Starmer’s Scottish branch office.
Let’s start with the basics. Not only is “Scottish Labour” legally nothing more than an identifying mark for UK Labour in Scotland, as far as a Westminster general election is concerned, there is no such thing as a “Scottish Labour” manifesto. Any Labour MPs returned to represent Scottish constituencies will sit in the Commons as part of the UK Labour party, they will not form a distinct bloc of “Scottish Labour” MPs, they will not vote in an organised manner as a separate Scottish political party, they will take the UK Labour whip and will do Keir Starmer’s bidding, not Anas Sarwar’s. The document which Anas Sarwar presented to a receptive Scottish press today is a fantasy, not a political reality, and it is insulting the intelligence of the voters to pretend that this really represents the platform upon which Labour candidates in Scotland are standing in this election.
Many of the policies in the document which Sarwar presented at Murrayfield on Tuesday relate to devolved powers which are the responsibility of the Scottish Government. No Westminster MP of any party political hue has any power or influence over them. Sarwar would have been as well telling us what the position of “Scottish Labour” is on the French general election due to be held in a couple of weeks. That has got bugger all to do with MPs who sit in the House of Commons, and neither do powers exercised by the Scottish Parliament.
For example the “Scottish Labour” Westminster manifesto devotes 11 of its 113 pages to talking about the NHS and a further 10 to talking about education. NHS Scotland is devolved, education in Scotland is devolved but this supposedly Westminster manifesto gives over more than 20% of its length to discussing two areas which MPs in the Commons have no say over. Other devolved matters which feature in this manifesto include transport, social care, housing, and sport. Over a quarter, if not more, of this Westminster manifesto is not in fact about Westminster at all. Who you vote for on 4 July will make not whit of difference to these issues.
At every Westminster general election since the establishment of the devolution settlement, the Labour party and the other anti independence parties have campaigned on devolved issues which are the proper remit of the Scottish Parliament and yet far from calling them out for misleading the electorate, the media in Scotland has for the most part encouraged them to do so.
However the most gob smackingly hypocritical section of this fantasy manifesto comes on page 29, entitled “Our approach to democratic renewal”. That is nauseating coming from a party which conspired with the Conservatives to deny the democratic will of the people of Scotland following the Holyrood elections of 2021, when Labour, together with the other anti independence parties which lost that election traduced Scottish democracy in order to ensure that they got what they wanted even though the people had rejected it at the ballot box. Labour’s approach to democratic renewal consists of respecting only those democratic events which deliver a result to the liking of the Labour party and ignoring or Londonsplaining away those which don’t. How about starting with that democratic right of the people of Scotland to decide on Scotland’s future? Tell us exactly how the people of Scotland can exercise that right without being vetoed by a British Prime Minister Anas, then, just then, we might give you as hearing when you start to pontificate about democratic renewal.
But it gets worse. Labour, a party which supports the hard Brexit imposed on Scotland by the Tories despite the fact Scotland voted heavily against it writes in this surreal document. “The UK’s departure from the EU will result in many more powers for the Scottish Parliament in the coming years.”
That is gaslighting of the very worst kind. Far from more powers being delivered to the Scottish Parliament as a result of Brexit so far the Brexit that Scotland roundly rejected has been used by Westminster as an excuse to undermine, sideline, and circumvent the devolution settlement. If Anas Sarwar is telling us now that the UK’s departure from the EU will result in many more powers for the Scottish Parliament in the coming years, then the onus is on him and his party to tell us what these powers are precisely, and to give us a firm timetable for their transfer to Holyrood. Failing that this promise is just so much more of the jam tomorrow bollocks that we have seen from the Labour party in the past.
Every time that a concrete proposal has been put to the Labour party for additional powers that ought to be transferred to Holyrood in order to tackle a Scotland specific problem, the Labour party has said no. That has been the case with the transfer to Holyrood of employment law – Labour said no. Despite this this “Scottish Labour manifesto claims “We support further devolution of powers to Holyrood including borrowing and employment rights” even though Angela Raynor, the UK shadow minister responsible for employment rights specifically ruled out their devolution asserting that her new deal for workers – which has since been gutted – rendered it unnecessary.
It was the same when it was suggested that Scotland needs control over aspects of immigration policy – Labour said no. So if it’s not employment law or immigration, just what are the additional powers that the Labour party tells us will be coming to the Scottish Parliament in the coming years? This is a fantasy manifesto from a fantasy party.
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If Starmer wins enough of this election in Scotland there’ll be no adding on, there’ll only be taking away before the 2026 Scottish elections, because he and we know there’ll be nothing forthcoming to the benefit of Scotland except more of the same as the Tories dished out, which would cost Starmer’s Labour Tories big losses in 2026
Rather than face a disastrous Scottish election Starmer will neuter Scotland before we get there
I think that Holyrood is a colonial administration set up by an Act from the colonisers parliament in London. Yes we have a few bauble powers but we have absolutely no financial control. As long as we have parties that support Westminster we will never get our freedom. Never.
Starmer, Sarwar, etc are Unionists end of story.
Join Salvo Liberation, ignore politicians and fight for our freedom using law.
No matter what party governs Scotland from Westminster it makes little difference as we have no control. In 1707 we were given 45 MP’s which was then 8.06% of the total today we have 8.76% of the total. Nothing changes it’s all a myth and smoke.
Holyrood has no power at all in the U.K. only some administrators to tweek a few departments. Power remains in London.
Hoping for any perceived future help from London is naive in the extreme. Any policy by Indy parties will fail on independence if they try.
Our MP’s should not take up their seats.
There is only one route to Independence and that is with the support of a majority of people living in Scotland. There is no other route “legal” or otherwise because if the majority say NO then how can there be Independence?
The facts are that we who do support Independence need to make that known at every single election by electing representatives of parties whose goal is also Independence. When it comes to a General Election such as this one then the biggest impact in the UK and those watching from overseas comes from electing as many SNP members as possible to Westminster.
For sure our MP’s not taking up their seats will raise international attention to what is going on but if you have fewer Independence MP’s than Unionist MP’s representing Scotland then it all adds up to the great sum of feck all.
The best way to Independence is by showing that you want it publicly and voting for the SNP. That’s the reality and the only show in town.
Salvo dot Scot “Read More” on two articles on the main page “How The Union Came To Be” and “Ending The Union” gives “No Results Found”. And the word “Referendum” should feature on the main page somewhere – as Alex says, Independence can not and should not, take place without the support of a majority of the Peoples of Scotland.
And the tab “Freeports” does not belong on the site at all, leading to an article – “The Scandal of Freeports” is a (anti-Forbes = anti-SNP) political viewpoint which does not belong on a site for Independence which should be non-partisan to have any chance of success. I wouldn’t Join.
Disappointing.
You simply do not understand
” North Britain” ( copyright G. Brown ) or ”a region of the UK” ( copyright some Tory twit who worked for Gove ) has been masquerading at The Euros under the pseudonym ”Scotland ” which clearly distresses many a unionist who rightly wish to see it take its place as a northern extension of Englandshire .
This deception has been exacerbated by UK Labour Party’s Branch Office publishing a document today that purports to be a ”Scottish Manifesto” for the UK GE . If taken seriously this might fool some people to actually think that there existed such an entity as ”Scotland” ! This was quickly refuted by The Glorious Leader’s Big Brother Hit Squad , which has been charged with ensuring party discipline .
Thankfully however , this ”Scottish Manifesto” was so full of unmitigated crap that no serious journalist ( BBC’s James Cook excepted ) could be convinced by it for a moment . It was a patently transparent move by an over zealous party apparatchik , Mr Murray of Edinburgh , to catch The Glorious Leader’s eye in a desperate attempt to ingratiate himself . A spokesperson for Mr Murray has intimated that he was more than just a bellend in a Union Jack suit and he wanted the Great Leader to see him as a future Alistair Jack or even a Jacqui Baillie ( Gender reform permitting ), who could re-engage the Party with those they had abandoned decades ago – The North British Working Class .
Moving rapidly The Glorious Leader has removed this document from Labour Party History and replaced it with a moving collection of his own speeches in which he pays tribute to his upbringing as a foundling , teaching himself to read , studied for The Bar , saved the Gazan People from Jeremy Corbyn’s anti -Palestinian abuses , scored the winner for Engerland in three major tournaments and intends to rescind the abomination that is the Two Child Welfare Cap along with abolition of the House of Lords – next century !
Remember – Vote Change ! – to preserve the status quo !
Anything short of devolved fiscal autonomy is just lies piled on top of old lies from British Labour.When are some Scots going to realise that they are being conned by London based political parties.
Perhaps they want to be fooled so that they do not have to deal with the cognitive dissonance represented by Scotland’s situation within the UK union.
People in former British colonies dealt with this problem by getting rid of Westminster control.Only by doing this can we acquire true democracy in our country.
Until then,we continue to have the farce of sending elected representatives to England’s Parliament where they have no say.
It is laughable attempt by Labour to sound relevant in this election in Scotland.
We all know that Sarwar will dance to Starmer’s tune on every issue from the child cap to ceasefires in the ME. He simply doesn’t have the authority to be different.
I won’t be wasting my time reading this pseudo manifesto. Who on earth produces a manifesto two years before an election? A week is a long time in politics, two years is an eternity.
‘.. this infantilised corner of the multiverse in which the media in Scotland colludes in and enables the deceptions and misrepresentations of Keir Starmer’s Scottish branch office.’
I posted on this theme elsewhere btl today. I listened this morning (Tuesday) to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. It contained extensive clips of a hustings held the previous day in the Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke constituency. It featured Pamela Nash, the Labour candidate.
Challenged about Labour’s decision, should it gain power in Westminster, NOT to abolish the UK-wide ‘two-child benefit cap’, Ms Nash quickly switched from advocating that all those listening to her should give their vote to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to then telling those listening that the Labour in Scotland party opposes the continuation of the ‘two-child benefit cap’!
In effect Ms Nash was saying ‘vote Labour’ but if there are things about Labour’s manifesto you really don’t like, if you’re a voter in Scotland you don’t need to worry. There is another Labour Party you can vote for – it’s the Labour in Scotland party – because its different from the Labour not in Scotland party!
What you’ll never hear Ms Nash acknowledge though is that by voting Labour in Scotland you won’t be doing a thing to oppose what it is you really don’t like in the Labour not in Scotland manifesto. And as the ‘two child benefit cap’ is a matter reserved, the only Labour Party that could remove it in government is the Labour not in Scotland party, the only one that is a proper party.
It’s such a ‘clever’ wheeze: (i) deceive voters in Scotland by fighting a Westminster election on matters devolved to Holyrood; and (ii) when the Labour Party in order to gain power in Westminster based on England’s votes opts for policies that are unpopular in Scotland, the sham Labour in Scotland party proclaims it doesn’t support these Labour not in Scotland party policies; (iii) all the while hypocritically condemning the Scottish Government whilst in denial about the often much greater shortcomings of devolved public services in Labour-governed Wales.
And yes, all this is possible – and may prove electorally successful – only with the media in Scotland colluding in and enabling these deceptions and misrepresentations!
I presume Pamela Nash of Scotland in Union plays cricket.
She’ll probably rename “Scotland in Union” as “Scotland in Union out”.
I’ll drink to that!
Aye, “…you might think that it would be laughed off the stage of its launch event and a furious media would tear into it for misleading the public and wasting everyone’s time ” – Precisely – Instead HMS James Cook bends over backwards to report context free https://archive.ph/BuxMk
Having read and carefully considered everything this marvellously concise and accurate post up to the current last BTL at June 19, 2024 at 5:29 am.
It is my opinion that you are all miss reading the picture.
Take one or two steps back and throw a shovel or two’s salt on this to perceive the bigger picture.
As we all know there are Lies, Dammed Lies, and Politician’s comments/pronouncements/VOW’s/declarations (delete as required).
The document in question does not in fact contain any purposeful lies. But when you look at it from the big picture perspective it becomes clearly a corporate ‘Freudian Slip’. This is an actual outline of labour’s plan for Scotland between 04-Jun-24 and May-26 high lighting the main targets to be clawed back under wasteminster control. Which they believe will allow them to drag us initially kicking and screaming, but becoming more and more acquiescent as we realise that we have control of nothing, in our own country and are only able to survive because of the ‘west masters’ benevolence.
If you take a real step back you can see that the possible start of this policy was the ‘Smith Commision’
“Oh! what a tangled web they weave, when first they practice to deceive”
So, officially 12 days since our last poll of any use in Scotland. So how do things look here? No idea. SNP possibly slipped ahead 2 weeks ago, with turnout still desperately low looking. Labour set to be massively rejected by Scots even with a low turnout favouring them. That’s all I know.
However, that useless IPSOS panel MRP can at least tell us another thing we already know, and that’s that there are no SNP-Lab battles going on.
There are statistically zero NET SNP-Lab swing voters. That’s why there is the sum total of absolutely no relationship whatsoever between the SNP vote share and the Lab share. Same for SNP and con, as shown in the IPSOS data.
We have no SNP wavering back and forth. No areas of Scotland which have crept back from SNP to Lab. As noted numerous times, not a single SNP voter NET has come home to Labour. It’s like England, where basically no voters have moved to Labour NET since 2019. The ‘rise’ UK-wide is them standing still. Small gains from the Tories at best.
Which is why there is a relationship between % Lab and % Con in Scotland. That is little Britain in Scotland. A land that is forever England and behaves like it. A microcosm of England in Scotland. Some areas more Tory, some more Labour, movement between the two.
The SNP vote operates entirely independently of both. It operates in Scottish Scotland. A different country. A nation of people who no longer wish to be part of the UK. Britain is dead to them if it ever was alive.
The SNP vote varies with turnout. With hope. With the belief change can be affected. That’s what has been driving it up and down since that fateful day in 2007 when Scots began to reject Labour UK governance.
Did the polls stop being published in Scotland when the SNP went ahead? Seems mighty suspicious!
Well the data, even with outliers like Panelbase / Redfield & Wilton, Yougov(?) all collectively show the SNP gaining ground to at least, worst case, draw level at around t-24 days from the election (10th June). Maybe go slightly ahead as per my plot.
Our last one (Panelbase / Norstat which tend to get SNP 7-8% lower in final polls when the electorate have been recently disengaged) was done a day after that (main fieldwork 11th June), but ties in with it (SNP up, narrow gap, Yes up). Since then, we’ve had zero Scottish polls apart from the two week old Yougov, which was done 1 week before the apparent crossover (main fieldwork 3rd June).
That IPSOS UK MRP isn’t a Scottish poll and is basically as old as the last actual IPSOS Scottish poll. Wiki have put it well behind the Survation MRP (7% SNP lead), but I conservatively consider them to be around the same time based on fieldwork dates.
I used the 2011 comparison not to say that we’ll get a repeat, just to say that elections are not set in stone, and that rapid changes can occur in very short spaces of time.
The SNP lead over Labour was only 4 points on average in 2011 on 29th April. This became 9 points by 3rd May and 14 on the day (5th).
So really only 2 days before were polls saying that in all probability the SNP would win, and probably comfortably, but not near a majority.
If Scots do decide to go out and vote in larger numbers than polls indicated 10 days ago, polls should look very different to what’s in had, and most likely to the SNP’s benefit.
‘Blow for Starmer / Sarwar’.
Not that he had a hope in hell anyway.
https://archive.is/TyrWv
Scottish Labour suspend candidate over ‘pro-Russian’ social media post
A SCOTTISH Labour candidate has been suspended by the party following reports that he shared material online which appeared to downplay Russia’s role in the Salisbury poisonings.
The BBC reports Andy Brown, who is standing in Aberdeen North and Moray East, in April 2018 shared an article from Russian state media outlet RT (formerly known as Russia Today) which claimed the “toxin” used in the poisonings was “never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other Nato states”.
And will they now replace them with some candidate from a foreign land?
Except in Scotland and London. Different countries. Wales standing out as different too.
https://news.sky.com/story/immigration-more-people-believe-it-has-a-negative-impact-on-society-than-positive-poll-suggests-13154613
Immigration: More people believe it has a negative impact on society than positive, poll suggests
The survey revealed deep political distrust among the public, with 52% saying they think Labour are not telling the truth about what they think on immigration, and 49% saying the same thing about the Conservatives.
I note that Scotland has the same or a higher level of immigration (non Scots born = 20.56%, 2022) than England (non-English born = 19.65%, 2021). Wales has the highest levels of all (29.11%, 2021).
Labour have deselected their candidate in Aberdeen North and Moray East because he shared a news clip form RT in 2018 questioning the official narrative on the Salisbury poisonings. He also shared a quote from a Jewish historian who seems to have supported Jeremy Corbyn.
How Stalinist the Labour Party has become. Purged for wrong think.
So the voters of Aberdeen North and Moray East will have to decide whether to vote for a discredited (two weeks before the election) ex-Labour candidate, a Lib Dem, a Reform an SNP candidate – Seamus Logan, or a Tory candidate – Douglas Ross.
Difficult decision – not.
https://archive.ph/r069S
Who removed this candidate from the Labour List in Moray ?
It was Starmer’s decision and his alone – not Sarwar’s . I doubt Sarwar was even consulted before this happened – so makes a mockery of ”Scottish Labour ” !
If Sarwar wanted to retain him he would have been given short shrift and quickly told his place in the CHANGEd Labour Party .
”Stand at the back , Anas , hold up your placard and say nothing !”
“Who controls the past controls the future. …”
The BBC are podcasting 1984 on R 4 to celebrate the 75th anniversary. Well worth a listen for the scarily contemporary observations of the British state at work. Orwell worked for the BBC so knew the inner workings.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m00201vh
She failed to add that any Tory who has been in power for the last 14 years and used that power to make the lives of the majority of people more miserable are very welcome to join the changed Labour party.
Tories of all shades are welcome as they have the very “values” that matter most to “changed” Labour.
https://archive.ph/ePuQW
Rachel Reeves is a very scary character.
Prof Robertson posted this on 7th June. Should be on billboards everywhere.
How independence adds up, simply
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/06/07/how-independence-adds-up-simply/
Link to that London Economic article
https://archive.is/gfbW2
I trust you noted the ‘Scottish PUBLIC sector’ in that appraisal, rather revealing of the duplicity of ALL Westminster parties (and wannabees) parroting the ‘we can’t afford it’ bullshit, including their proxies and media in Scotland….
👍 I think it’s very important information that needs to be spelt out over and over again until people “get it”.
Political compass have evaluated Labour 2024 to be notably more right-wing (economically) than the French National Rally.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/france2024
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024
NR more authoritarian, but economically more in the centre.
NR far less extreme overall than UK Con and Reform, yet the British media call it far right but would never say the same about Blighty’s English extreme right parties.
Extreme right authoritarian about to take 1/3 of the vote in England. Right wing authoritarian Labour 40%. Right wing economic but socially centrist Libs 10%.
All the flavours of the right in England. Moderate centre to left nowhere to be seen but Scotland, Wales and N. of Ireland.
You can see how Starmer has changed Labour. No doubt about it.
On a discussion over NHS privatisation:
“We don’t need to agree with the SNP” says Labour spokesman on BBC Politics Today programme
This is what you get from England’s Westminster political parties
Arrogance! because they know they can do whatever they like, and they will
“Vote Labour get Tory” was correct then and correct now, the minute they think they’ve won, this is how they react
Labour will win the general election, not because one single person in Scotland votes for them, England’s population of 55 million people decides what will happen like they always do
It’s called a monopoly and they designed it that way
My UK PoP today officially has Labour on the same share of the electorate as their worst defeat since 1935 back in 2019. OMFG.
21.6(-)%
52% Turnout, down this past week about 0.5%. Zero mandate for Labour draws ever closer.
There is no way the UK could survive Labour winning a majority on such low levels of support. There would be no honeymoon at all. Starmer would enter No 10 like an English Gordon Brown.
The good news is that SNP levels are continuing to show direct correlation with turnout, both in Scotland and UK-wide. The moment this edges up in Scotland, it all goes to SNP, continuing a pattern going back to 2011, possibly stronger than it was before.
The SNP do not need to win folks back from Labour, they need them just to go out and vote. That happens, they should win. If it happens in a big way, could be a handsome one.
Now Scots can see the SNP manifesto, they can now decide if they like the contents.
Independence features highly.
Manifesto here.
https://www.snp.org/manifesto/
^^That’s on page 01.
Another important manifesto pledge.
it’s always bugged me why a pro independence politician has never asked a pro union politician why they are so reluctant to advocate for English independence as we are subsidy junkies and the poor wee English tax payers would be better off without us . After all its meant to be a union of equals an independence is a two way street. It would be interesting to hear the answer.
Heads up. I have just completed a YouGov survey on voting intentions etc. Quite a long detailed one. Look out for it in next few days unless it is some group commissioning a private poll
UK or Scottish one indications? If you are asked about Scottish leaders, Holyrood, indy, then it’s obvious. If it’s only about GE VI, Sunak, Starmer and how much you hate migrants / furinners, then it’s a UK one.
All leaders incl SNP. If I remember correctly there were questions about SNP performance at Holyrood. Quite an extensive set of questions. Also some on Brexit/EU
I see the IFS have done their analysis of the SNP manifesto. Slightly to my surprise it is rather less brutal than it’s assessment of most of the others.
‘Britain can’t survive it’s independence (from the EU) alone’ is the message in this election.
Scottish Skier wrote:-
‘Britain can’t survive it’s independence (from the EU) alone’ is the message in this election.
Sorry but ‘ye canny dae that’ when ye say ‘Britain’ ye need tae gee us a clue which version of the “Mental Construct” ye ur referin’ tae.
Thur’s that mony different versions. It starts wi’ ‘memories of empire’ and slowly whittles down to jist engerland. So a clue wid be gid.
One more thing I have noticed the proponents of ‘BRITIAN’ become ever more tenacious as it reduces toward jist engerland.
Yougov, with it’s comically silly ‘others’ numbers, has generously increased SNP seat count in its latest MRP.
That two sets of MRPs now showing the SNP on the rise. Yougov and Survation. Focus on the trends, as Yougov have the Tories standing sure in these parts while they collapse across the UK, in complete contrast to Scottish polling.
And it’s at least a week old, as most fieldwork will be 11 June, declining exponentially from then on as they try to get enough SNP 2019.
I see they still have the Tories winning 5 seats which just isn’t going to happen, they will be lucky to hang on to 2.
+1% surge, with the Reform vote doubling as Scots embrace English pro-Brexit nationalist unionism whilst simultaneously moving to independence, as per Yougov’s own Y/N numbers.
Schrodinger’s Scotland – moving to indy while coming home to the union at the same time.
That is literally what the media is trying to sell at the moment.
Aye, Tories hold 83% of scots seats, but just 30% of English.
That’s believable.
Why was Ross even scrabbling around worried!
Another SNP overtaking Labour 10 days ago or so poll
34(+1)% SNP
33(-1)% Lab
12(+1)% Con
8(+4)% Reform (checks for buttons up my back)
3(-4)% Green (more sensible)
3(-2)% others
14% ‘other’ wee parties is for the birds. 2% is the norm, 3% the record high in recent decades. Low turnout unionist / other oversampling still going strong a week ago.
I think we can conclude that aye, the SNP have gone back ahead, and this occurred around 10 days ago.
Think the Telegraph has a brutal poll coming out for the Tories,.. about 50 seats or something similar. Sunak to lose his.
An utterly terrifyig prospect. 2/3 of Scots at least massively reject Labour, yet the latter – the most unpopular government ever to take office – gets unfettered power due to mass boycott as the FPTP system finally creates a one party state.
The end of the union is nigh. Scottish Labour will end up in a fight with English nationalist little dictator Starmer and that will be that. He’s a control freak and will not stand for devolution. Watch him fall out with Welsh Labour as he tells them England owns Wales too.
Scottish one nation Tories will move to indy as the party party of British conservative unionism final dies its death.
The Tories are the embodiment of the union. They die, it dies. The last time they collapsed we voted 74% Yes to semi-indy from an English Labour government. This time it will be Yes to full indy.
About 40% of “Welsh” Labour already are pro-indy. With Starmer still standing by Gething (FM) after the latter lost a vote of no-confidence in the Senedd and all sorts of other skullduggery afoot, you sense that the whole edifice is on a shoogly peg, as you Scots say.
Further, the fact that further devolution has essentially been ruled out by the prospective new Labour Secretary of State (aka Minister Responsible for the Western Colonies) and barely a mention of Cymru in the UK Labour manifesto – Gething has obviously not emulated Star Wars in producing a “Welsh” Labour one, as he knows their record here is dire – then we could see a Plaid Cymru surge at the next Senedd election in 2026, and, as Skier has pointed out so often, Starmer’s own honeymoon will be over before then, too.
I’m already joining the queue for popcorn. Want to join me?
The Telegraph poll is Savants and it has a very low seat number for the SNP too. Basically Labour win everything. Not sure if it is sound or if the Telegraph are trying to terrify the Tory faithful back into the fold. It has by far the highest majority for Labour of any poll…a majority of about 380.
Seat projections from the new MRP poll for @Telegraph
Labour 516
Tories 53
Lib Dems 50
SNP 8
Plaid 4
Reform 0
Why anyone would believe crap such as this beats me.
Some people do button up the back.
And this is too out of date to be of any use anyway. The main fieldwork is 10 days ago. See my post below on the folly of MRP the closer you get to voting day.
That said the outcome would guarantee Scottish independence, as if there is one thing that’s 100% consistent in polls, it’s that Scots are going to overwhelmingly reject Labour at the ballot box.
Scots Tories would vote for indy if their party is destroyed UK-wide. Reform is English nationalist and they hate Labour probably more than the SNP.
If you are a Scots tory, the only way to get Tories near government going forward will be indy.
Mark my words, when the conservative and unionist party dies, the union dies with it. The DUP etc have nothing in common with English Labour nor Reform Either. I mean FHS, Labour’s sister party is the SDLP!
This is shaping up to be the last election of the union and it actually doesn’t matter how the SNP do, much as I hope we get another 2019 or 2011 type surprise.
It’s turning into an English right-wing horror show that even English people are puking up at.
We are so, so, so, so far from 1997.
Only 17k. too small to be of any use and 10 days out of day. Will have a look, but already QA/QC’d out in earnest.
We’re now at the stage where the media in Scotland are stuck with the only question they have left
Whit ye gonnae dae if they say Naw?
And the answer John Swinney gave is the answer that all people in Scotland should be paying attention to,
“Why are you asking me that question, ask the government of the UK?”
The media in Scotland are either afraid to ask their betters in England why they are running a dictatorship , or the media in Scotland support that dictatorship
That should be John Swinney’s next question to the media
The UK government is no different to any dictatorship in the world yet the media is quick to condemn those other countries for doing exactly what England does
Denying democracy to a smaller country under threat of political arrest of the government of Scotland if they dare implement the wishes of the electorate as voted for
England runs a mafia gang voted for by their people in that country
There are people in Scotland voting Labour because they think their vote will make a difference to Labour winning the general election
It doesn’t and it won’t, England decides who the government is going to be because there are 55 million people in England
The only difference Scottish votes make to a general election is if we vote against whoever England votes for, that way we tell them clearly we don’t want to be ruled by them
Hate crime?
Wow! Is that for real?
The tweet is real but it looks like it’s from a group calling themselves British Democratic Alliance and not the Reform Party.
Scotland, know your enemies No. 32980 b:
British Democratic Alliance – British democratic Alliance – A British Government, For The People, by The People!
Labour’s first 35% of the campaign. Reform on 24%!
Scots need to see this. If England is going English nationalist, only one thing Scots can do here.
Incidentally, the folly of MRP is now coming into play. Big samples are nice, but they take a long time to gather.
Savanta has an MRP which fieldwork started on the 7th of June, finishing 18th. Probably 70% of responses will be 7/8 maybe 9th, then they’ll have started chasing the quotas they’re missing, and by the time it’s the 18th, they’ll be tidying up the last few % stragglers, like the SNP 2019 who just won’t respond.
Now if polls are not changing, then this is all fine. But they are now changing fast, and the pace is picking up. A week is now old, 10 days ancient. MRP is no longer any use.
Take More in common, they’ve just released an MRP which started on the 22nd June. What’s the f**king point of that? We need to know how things look now, not at the end of last month FFS.
It’s like me trying to estimate the cruising altitude of a plane by measuring it’s altitude while it’s taking off. My first measurement is 1000 ft, my final 10,000, then I go off and do the numbers, conclude 5500 and this hits the headlines when the plane is at 20,000 and climbing to 30,000.
In a campaign poll, you want 2 days of fieldwork and the poll out the next morning. You may still be behind, but only by a day or so.
Is that 22nd of May?
Sorry, yes 22 of May the fieldwork began!
It’s only 10k too, so is in the bin along with sore thumb outlier Savanta.
14 people per constituency over the course of a month? Is this some sort of joke?
But there’s money to be made with this new MRP thing!
The polls for this election are simply getting more and more ridiculous. State of this.
All of them are shite and the only poll that matters is the one on the 4th July.
Vote SNP for Independence.
Take that last post with a pinch of salt, I can’t find the poll itself on the People Polling website or twitter account.
It is a new poll from them, the Scottish subsample has the SNP on 37% and Labour on 20% LOL
Ignore anything from people polling that bucks the trend. Its Matt Goodwins polling ‘company’. A couple of polls back they had the SNP on 0% it took him a few days to work out that the figures had been keyed incorrectly!
24% Reform looks like an outlier.
35% Labour does not buck the trend though. With an increasing number of low 40’s then upper 30’s starting to appear, a 35% was going to appear at some point. We’ve had 37’s and 38’s after all.
It’s at the low end of variance, but is not outwith that, so does not seem to be an outlier, just at the very low side of the emerging range.
I have Labour on 41.2% VI, down 3.5% on a peak just before the 1:1 ITV debate. They are now on 21.4(-0.2)% of total electorate using certain to vote levels now and in polls just ahead of the past 3 elections vs real turnouts, so less support than 2019.
Labour wipeout! Totaly believe this subsample! 🙂
That was better performance in the fitba, tonight, Scotland!
Scotland 1 Switzerland 1
You’re still Alive!
We can win the last one and go home. Once Scotland have made sure they can’t progress, they start playing decent football.
If Scotland beat Hungary on Sunday they will go through to the next round.
Don’t say that and jinx things FFS!
All to play for on Sunday, and with hindsight I’m chuffed we got a draw. Anyways, under the usual misleading headline which doesn’t match reality from the usual suspect in the National, this sums it up:
Asked about comments from Dundee-born Hollywood actor Brian Cox (above) who said he feared the SNP were backing off the idea of independence, Swinney said:
“A future made in Scotland, I think that’s a pretty clear commitment to independence right on the front cover of our manifesto. And then if we open up the manifesto – ‘vote SNP for Scotland to become an independent country’. I think that that’s quite clear, or I hope it’s clear enough anyway.”
I can tell you this – the usual extremist anti-SNP mob won’t be impressed, but I think it’s about the right level to appeal to normal Indy supporters while also trying to attract others to vote SNP.
Remember that in 2011, of those who voted SNP to give the SNP an overall majority to make the 2014 Indy Ref possible, 14% actually voted NO according to post vote opinion polls. Though apparently some regretted it after.
A lot depends now on the ground in the next two weeks – a whitewash of the Unionists is still possible it seems to me. Few people actually like either the Tories or Labour.
Boys did good and much more like them.
Spurred on in grand fashion by the guys n gals in tartan .
The Scotland fans have made a big impression in Munich and Cologne , I’m hoping that will win over the German neutrals for the game on Sunday!
Labour spokesman on BBC Debate night says Scotland will never be *allowed* to change its mind from the 2014 decision about independence under Labour
Tories and Liberal Democrats agreed
So it doesn’t matter what you vote for folks, the British parties and their representatives in Scotland say England decides Scotland’s future and that’s it over done and suck it up
What do you say and what are you prepared to do about it?
From the manifesto:
“Give the people of Scotland a say on their future. Demand the permanent transfer of legal power to the Scottish Parliament to determine how Scotland is governed, including the transfer of power to enable it to legislate for a referendum.”
There’s some plonkers elsewhere insisting that this means asking for a Section 30, which was a temporary transfer. They can’t read, as the manifesto says “permanent transfer”, which means actually changing the Scotland Act (by an Act of the UK Parliament which MUST legally have legislative consent from ScotParl). Probably like this from 2019:
https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/corporate-report/2019/12/scotlands-right-choose-putting-scotlands-future-scotlands-hands/documents/scotlands-right-to-choose-putting-scotlands-future-in-scotlands-hands/scotlands-right-to-choose-putting-scotlands-future-in-scotlands-hands/govscot%3Adocument/scotlands-right-choose-putting-scotlands-future-scotlands-hands.pdf
Annex B:
1 Scotland’s right to self-determination
(1) The Scotland Act 1998 is modified as follows.
(2) After section 63A insert—
“63B Scotland’s right to self-determination
(1) It is recognised that the people of Scotland have the right to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.
(2) The purpose of this section is to signify the commitment of the Parliament and Government of the United Kingdom to the people of Scotland’s right to self-determination.”.
(3) The title of Part 2A becomes “The people of Scotland’s right to decide their constitutional future
and
2 Scottish Parliament’s competence to legislate for an independence referendum
In Part 1 of schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 (general reservations), after paragraph 5 insert—
“5A Paragraph 1 does not reserve a referendum on the independence of Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom.”.
This is actually, by the way, supported by people of influence not in the SNP. I can’t be bothered giving references for that.
There’s a lot of other stuff too in that Annex B – stuff worth reading if you an insomniac!
There is no way that Labour will have a majority of 200 plus. Nor do I belive Snp will have so few seats. Hard to tell which I find more irritating bonkers polling/ this blasted election campaign or people waffling on about fitba. So Scotland won a game tonight that’s nice. Does that really help the country or its people. Nope. We are still stuck in a Uk that is becoming more fascist by the day. Loads of polling companies making money out of their crap polling.
If you’re not a football supporter it’s understandable that one game here or there means nothing, but there’s a wider population to consider who believe it or not base their entire lives around a game of football, it’s meaningful to them so much so that just taking part in international terms is every bit as important nationalistically to them as any politics
Every country in the world feels a strong sense of its own nationalism when involved in world football, if it weren’t so important to nations in terms of national morale nations wouldn’t tolerate half the trouble some of the hooligans create when they attend these events
I guarantee that if Scotland had the ability to win such tournaments the morale of the nation would be so buoyed by the experience that interest in independence would soar like an Eagle
The release of endorphins and serotonin created by the joy of winning a game of football (or any supported sport) is positively life changing and immensely beneficial in health terms (except for the beer part)
Also traditionally those who do not support independence tend not to support Scotland’s national team, except for the pretendy ScotBrits Like McCoist and others who given the chance would have opted to play for a United Great Britain of England team if there had ever been such a thing
Listen to the supporters (sing) the anthem, it doesn’t make anybody play better football, it’s an expression of nationality, and Scotland’s tartan army expresses their nationality louder than any other country, they’re (singing)(expressing) their nationalistic desire to be heard as a nation
I use the brackets when I describe (singing) because, well, y’know, singing?
I really hate football (and I consider myself very lucky my husband is not interested in it either, he likes Rugby). However I am loving the Tartan Army and how everyone else is loving them too. Like I think I said to you before I think they’re putting Scotland on the map for a lot of people and in a positive way, whichnis a good thing. Regardless of the team’s performance
I followed Scotland football team when they were in World Cup in 1970s – 1990s and we know none of those competitions ended well for the team. Decided after that I would not put myself through all that hope again. I do not understand how women can support let alone enjoy playing football. Each to their own! . Scotlands identity as a nation is affected by too many 90 minute patriots I feel. The joy of hearing a large crowd singing Flower of Scotland wore off on me a long time ago. Too much to do with football is rampant tribalism and bigotry particularily in Glasgow. Working in Homelessness I saw the results of domestic violence when someones team got gubbed and that included when Scotland lost an important game. Maybe if we get Independence the team would play better 😉
Not a huge fan of “the beautiful game” myself BUT…
I think this has an element above and beyond the game. Maybe ‘soft power’ is too strong, but gives an example of how Scotland could behave in Europe when not part of ‘Team UK/GB’.
It shows Europe just how different the people of Scotland are from the English fans. Their behaviour produced a positive atmosphere which was very unlike the one that followed with England, which was much appreciated by the locals and their police force. Hopefully the 2 incidents also showed how different we are to any Scots watching the game too.
There may well be some who watched and thought “Why are we in ‘union’ with a nation that’s so radically different from our own? How come they get to lecture us on how to act, spend money etc?”
Also both John Swinney and Stephen Flynn were there. But no ‘royals’ or WM reps. People notice these things.
Some times the oddest, subtlest things start to niggle. A slight alteration in perspective builds. A different approach can sometimes work because your brain’s answering a different question from the ones it has a decided opinion on.
Another rise in Yes, this time from Savanta.
Hard to not argue that the right wing shit-show in England with prospect of Starmer in No. 10 is driving Scots to indy. Savanta themselves even ask this specific question and Scots say Yes to it; Starmer pushes them to indy.
49(+1)% Yes
51(-1)% No
The’re still giving Labour a lead, but Labour would still lose as they’re rejected by 2/3 of Scots on a crushingly low turnout. The low turnout numbers tie in with comical Tory and other levels. Scotland would get a hated Labour government it massively rejected. This seems unavoidable now.
UK-wide and here I’ve been picking up a sharp fall in turnout projection, with any small post-GE announcement gain here receding. This will inflate Labour in Scotland / reduce SNP by silent SNP2019 going back up again. It’s not actual support, as real labour support is crumbling. UK-wide they have less backers than 2019 now the data indicate. Their first UK 35% just appeared too. In Scotland, they’ve not gained a single SNP2019, only a few con.
My low turnouts could come true, or they may be underestimating actual turnout. The recent drop may be people who engaged, puked at what’s happening in England, and disengaged again. It is such a shitshow, it is hard even for me to watch. UK offers no hope of change, just extreme right wing ugliness and parochial, inward looking, jingoistic poverty. This is why levels of disengagement remain so very high.
If you have decided how you will vote in this bucket of puke and won’t be changing your mind, you may remain disengaged until he end. This did happen here in 2019, hence SNP were underestimated, wildly so sometimes.
This is why I am not even going to try and predict the outcome. The uncertainties are far too high, with polls all over the place and totally contradicting themselves. Scots moving to Yes and the unionists at the same time is clearly total nonsense. We are not getting representative polls, hence they don’t agree with each other or themselves. There has been movement to Yes, and it is at worst a tight race between Lab and SNP but with SNP2019 still totally disengaged and Labour voters moving to Yes at pace.
All we really know is that Labour are deeply unpopular, with Reform a bunch of racists on the rise in England. This is moving unionist Scots to indy. Also, even the teeniest rise in turnout heavily favours the SNP / Yes. Beyond that, we’re in the dark.
The electorate across the UK is revolted by the election, and is going to vote against Labour in massive majority. 2/3 in Scotland and 60% in England at least, and that’s with the low turnout favouring them. I still have my money on 35% for Labour UK-wide on the day. I’m putting a small punt on less votes than last time now too.
Ok, I will make a prediction; the UK in a massive political / constitutional mess / crisis as a result of this election. A crisis in Scotland, in Wales, in N. Ireland and in England. One that breaks the UK.
Ok, the Savanta is a ‘no change’. They see no change ever. Always exactly the same numbers for the whole of 2024. While everyone else has seen a swing to Labour, in May, with this dissipating rapidly in June, Savanta have seen absoltuely nothing happening.
Which means the swing away and back again happened, and Savanta isn’t of use for anything much, particularly as it has no record in Scotland. This makes it an uncalibrated poll like R&W. We’ve no idea how it performs. All we know is it doesn’t agree with those that we do have records for, but doesn’t disagree either. Seems it just got the same answer either side of a swing to Labour then back to SNP. It also says Yes is on the up. That is one thing that’s cross-board and for me the most important of all, as it’s independence we want.
And it’s nearly a week old. Bulk of survey would be 14th June.
Took 5 days to do, began on 14th, with surveys still being done on the 18th. That’s bad. People are en masse not responding. Should be 2 days in an election campaign. This isn’t mid term anymore.
This is a seriously turned off electorate, except if you are a Labour voter. Or a Reform. Then you are more excited and engaged, hence inflated on a low turnout projection.
Yesterday the Labour candidate was removed from the ballot in Douglas Ross’s new constituency. Today it’s the Reform party candidate’s turn to be removed.
Douglas can’t help it if he’s lucky.
More likely briefed on the damaging revelations to be arranged, hence him shitting on Duguid…
Here is how things look (right click and ‘open in new tab’ for higher res).
Turnouts look dire, and seem to have fallen after a rise. However, that may be people engaging, puking, deciding what they’ll do, then disengaging again until voting day. It truly is a shit show and I feel like doing the same.
SNP are up after a low after the BHA, Yousaf resignation etc which saw Labour stand still but take the lead as certain to vote / turnout levels hit rock bottom. A slight rise in these saw SNP draw level again. Yes also clearly climbed with this, and is at recent new highs, even with polls dominated by unionist respondents as 11% of those who voted in 2019 – all SNP – remain disengaged / off the radar. Include polls that we know are totally off in Scotland, underestimating SNP by whopping margins (panelbase/Norstat) and weird looking outliers with no record here (Savanta, R&W) and you have level pegging 1 week ago. Use the regulars which are not too bad, only underestimating SNP a wee bit in final polls (Yougov, Survation) plus decent enough IPSOS Scotland, and you have SNP with a lead 2 weeks ago.
It’s impossible for Labour to win this in any meaningful way it seems. The most they appear to be able to hope for is 1/3 of the vote on the lowest turnout ever as Scots mass boycott the vote. That should get them some seats but no mandate and a major constitutional crisis. SNP would lose a lot of seats and get a kick up the bum. ‘Defacto iref please for 2026 and no more faffing around’ would be the message from the electorate.
If turnout rises even a few %, SNP should take it all, and start winning seats all over the place. If turnout hits 60% (currently 57), then 45% SNP would be easy. Higher and he sky’s the limit.
For now, if it came out even between SNP and Lab on a mass boycott, both are losers, with the union the biggest one.
It’s grim for the UK, that’s for sure. 52% turnout and falling UK-wide. That comes off, Starmer has zero mandate and the UK’s in one mother of a constitutional crisis. We could even add in the pro-reunification parties winning North of Ireland, setting things on course for a border poll there, forced by the international community and the fact that Labour are supposed to be the sister party of the SDLP, ostensibly supporting the right of folks there to self-determine.
HMS Britannia’s impact with the iceberg now just 2 weeks away. Still nobody’s seen it and are instead deluding themselves with 1997 comparisons.
Obviously there have been no Y/N MRP polls. That’s just a copy and paste mistake. That’s just full Scottish poll data, all panel apart from 1 ipsos telephone.
Skier – you keep saying there will be a UK constitutional crisis if turnout is as low as you predict.
I doubt there will. The UK Establishment will simply ignore it, keep calm and carry on regardless. It’s what they do. Look at how they ignore Brexit. Look at how they ignore the majority Indy in HR asking for 2nd IndyRef.
They will just ignore the low turnout. And when I say “they” I mean red & blue Tories. There might be a couple of puff pieces here and there in the media but that will be the end of it. It’s not in any UK political party’s interests to make a song and dance out of any low turnout.
They’ll just proclaim “We won” and get on with it.
The end of the world is nigh
Well according to Nostradamus the 29th of June 2024, and we’re all going to be here to not enjoy it if old Nostys prediction is accurate
I’ve no doubt any journalists left alive in England will bemoan the fact that it ended their chances of winning all the football
Oh and Jeremy Vine reckons the SNP are really not against nuclear because of all the thousands of jobs we in Scotland benefit from, he’s always been a brainbox has Jeremy Vine, still not worked out that folk would rather be alive than have *a job* given the choice
Of course we in Scotland are not allowed a choice because we are lesser mortals and uncivilised to boot, so no loss to the empire in the greater scheme of things
The land like Chernobyl will eventually heal for use again, but not by Scots, so win win for the UK GB of England
The Tartan Army are fantastic ambassadors for Scotland – all 250,000 of them.
So the joint Scottish German independence march through Munich was widely reported wasn’t it
Except for viewers readers and listeners in the UK of GBs England domain and realm
Practically the whole of the EU supports Scotland’s right to choose our own future but right here in the land of the Nastys nobody knows that
And still we did nothing
Just looking back and I can confirm that when Labour lost the 1999, 2004 and 2009 union (European) parliament elections, they did not argue that their Westminster mandate was invalidated. That would be ridiculous.
Hence if Starmer wins, Holyrood can go right ahead and request a Section 30 from him and he can’t say no. Not unless he’s just the leader of another hated right wing Tory English government in London that Scots didn’t vote for.
Wikipedia is being much harder on Labour UK-wide than me. Their graph has Labour down nearly 5 points now since the start of the campaign compared to 3.5 in my PoP.
https://tinyurl.com/bde4ekhz
If that keeps up, my 35% on the day for Starmer will be spot on. 10% down on pre-election polls, just like Blair 1997.
What’s really bad for Starmer, is that he seems to be losing real voters. It’s not just turnout rising while Labour stands still. Turnout is not rising, even falling. Right now I have Starmer’s Labour on the same desperately low share of the total electorate that Blair got in 2005 as he approached his height of his unpopularity. So in that sense Starmer is emulating his right-wing mentor.
And what happened in Scotland after 2005? Who did Scots turn to in the face of a hated English Labour government?
Are there really people in Scotland who look at the likes of Labour’s Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie and think “Yep, those are the kind of people I want to represent me”
I think ‘muscular unionism’ will likely be having an affect. Some people who are indy-minded have basically seen from WM over the last 5 years or so the intransigence of “Now is not the time!” to S30 requests and have basically given up on indy, thinking “What’s the point – WM will just say ‘naw’?” And because of that intransigence (muscular unionism) are simply returning to the unionist fold, as The Establishment probably knew they would.
We are the diehards. Most are not.
That is “returning to the unionist fold or not bothering to vote at all”. “What’s the point?”
You make a good point but WM have managed to do much more than just make indy-minded folk think “what’s the point”. They have also very successfully made others think that the SNP are the enemy of Independence and not the only realistic route to Independence.
The simplest way to defeat your enemy is to cause divisions within your enemies forces and that is the main cause of all disillusionment and splits in the Independence movement.
Just exactly the same as “Project Fear” is used to frighten off some leaning towards indy, the constant negativity around Independence and especially the SNP has been the best weapons Westminster have of keeping a lid on support for both.
We need to get the message across that the SNP are the biggest threat to the UK and if you doubt that then you have been had and Westminster have been using you because they know that if they destroy the SNP then any thoughts of Independence really is dead for more than just a generation.
Vote SNP at every opportunity, there is no other way despite what some might tell you.
Support for indy is at 49%, up a couple of points in the past two weeks, and that’s in polls missing 11% of 2019 voters, all SNP.
So people have moved to indy en masse, not away from it. Possibly far more than we can see. I’ve never seen such high Yes in Labour 2019. The rise is a sight to behold.
Would that be a surprise given the English are even throwing up at what’s being offered to them by Westminster parties? 52% turnout projection 2 weeks out, with Labour on the same level as 2019 in terms of real support. It’s nuts.
For me, things are likely to explode in the coming months up to 2026. Union is a tinderbox. Here, in England, in Wales and in the N. of Ireland.
Starmer will be the last PM of Britain. He’ll wish he’d never purged and lied his way to the top.
Folks are mad right now ‘Yey, the party that embodies the UK – the party of conservative unionism – is about to die a horrible death and independence has never been so high in Scotland/Wales/N. of Ireland, even with unionist oversampling in Scotland! The union is saved! Yippie!’.
Lost their minds over silly VI numbers while Rome burns.
I actually said “negativity around Independence and especially the SNP has been the best weapons Westminster have of keeping a lid on support for both”.
If we are at 49% for Indy now, 10 years since the last referendum with an increase of 4% despite Johnson, Truss and Sunak doing their worst then it looks to me like the constant negativity has kept a lid on support for Independence.
Without the propaganda we would be over 55% now easily if not already Independent!
The real number is 55% baseline IMO. The current polling is not representative of the Scottish population. It’s why it’s contradictory and often nonsense.
I can’t give you the real number. I can only say the current number is for what is, without doubt, more unionist samples of the Scottish electorate.
Yes was rising in response to the UKSC case. Then Sturgeon was taken out and 11% of 2019 voters, all Yes, went silent. This caused a structural shift downwards of Yes in absolute terms, but it kept on steadily climbing as the forces behind it remained at play.
If you remove the structural shift, you’d be more in the mid 50’s for Yes.
It’s why unionists are insisting that Scots no longer want indy. Because they are hearing on the doorsteps that Scots wish exactly this. A clear majority of them. Sarwar does not understand the polls. He’s not ahead on the doorsteps, and SNP are not saying they’re back him. So all he can do is try to plead with imaginary Yes/SNP to ‘join him on this part of the journey’ having never met any of these people. They just exist on paper due to a quirk of polling.
Most of the times polls do not represent public opinion. They only do when you see high turnouts predicted. That is not right now. 49% is not Yes support. It’s the best it gets for the union.
If turnout goes up last minute like it did in 2011 and 2019, the real picture should emerge. We shall see.
All I can say is you appear to have missed entirely the whole point of my post when it has absolutely nothing to do with polling at all.
Probably. But I don’t think the UK establishment has been successful at all in its endeavors. It has neither divided the Yes movement nor managed to get support for indy down. At the same time, it’s not managed to win anyone over to unionist parties with polls showing that these should get less actual real walking around votes than 2019.
I was just watching Sky news and people in England can’t stand Labour or the Tories. In Scotland, they are in an even worse position.
I find it incredulous that nobody can see what’s coming. Pundits keep talking like Labour’s 35% is going to come on a 70% turnout, when right now it’s looking like a 52% one as the whole pile of shit caves in on itself.
Only prof Curtice has mentioned this elephant in private. I guess the money’s too good to spoil the party for everyone, as he’ll know what I know.
Polls show no voters have net returned to the unionist fold. It just has not happened. Not as a function of the total electorate.
This is from May, but nothing’s changed apart from some movement back to SNP and unionist to Yes.
But the low turnout projection is favouring unionists. What threw me at first was that SNP 2019 voters are not saying they are less likely to vote than last time, but at the same level as everyone else. So the polls also do not conclude SNP2019 are saying they plan to stay at home.
This is the case for Tory 2019 in England, which is boosting Labour even though they’ve lost real voters on 2019.
Nope, what has happened here in Scotland is 11% of 2019 voters – basically all of whom voted SNP in 2019 – went off radar early 2023 after the blows of the UKSC case and Sturgeon getting taken out by England’s establishment.
This dropped projected turnout levels to record lows. Down to 56%. As Labour 2019 are very vocal, along with oddballs like Reform, these are being oversampled, inflating their shares when a 57% is normalised up to 100% to give VI. You also have greens saying they support Green but on the day they’ll tactical SNP. That takes 4-5% from what would normally be SNP, and it all adds up. The latter did not sued to happen, but then English pollsters found that prompting for minnows on the initial prompt hits SNP (people say Green or Alba), so started doing that even though it gives wholly unrealistic outcomes.
Labour have not won any Yessers over. no matter how hard it can be to look at polls and understand that, it is key.
If they can’t win over English voters, how the hell could they possibly manage Yes Scots? Here is data from IPSOS as an example. Certain to vote is always higher than actual turnout levels, right now Labour are on 21.6% of total voters UK-wide in all polls. That’s no change on 2019.
Labour are on exactly the same level as they were when they suffered their worst defeat since 1935. They did win some people after the mini-budget, but them promptly lost these, as you can see in that early 2023 spike.
Which is why their apparent VI is so precarious. Any increase in turnout and they will tank, here and UK-wide.
So no Scots have gone home to Labour, but 11% who previously voted SNP are stony silent.
This is why it’s taking pollsters 33% longer to get their quotas in Scotland since early 2023. They are getting loads of eager Labour respondents, but really struggling for SNP.
Now maybe these silent SNP will stay at home for reasons you allude to. We don’t know as they won’t tell us.
All we know is that if they do turn out, it seems to be entirely for SNP, as the moment turnout levels rise even a smidgen, SNP shoots up. It’s why we have such volatility form poll to poll. It’s response rate variation. If pollster reach more SNP 2019, SNP VI shoots up. If they’ve struggled, sudden Labour go ahead again without any rise in real support. The different pollsters are at odds with each other and themselves because of this problem.
Scotland is not moving to Yes whist moving to unionist parties. It is moving away from unionist parties slowly and moving to Yes. That’s how you get Yes up while SNP is down. But silent SNP inflate unionist parties, making the picture so apparently contradictory.
It may be that some stay silent to the end. This happened in 2011 and 2019, both occasions where a lot of SNP voters had previously gone silent after a barrage of ‘blows ‘you economically illiterate anti-English racists…. suck up brexit!’ etc blows. In 2011, the SNP lead was just 4 points 5 days out and the pollsters never saw it coming on average. Final lead was 9 points when reality was 14. A 4 point lead 5 days out turned into a landslide after 2 years of polls saying Scots were coming home to Labour and were about to give them the landslide, not the SNP.
SNP dropped to 36% many times 2017-2019 and only in the final 10 days or so before 2019 did the polls suggest 42% on average, with panelbase predicting 38%, a whopping 7% out.
But I could not predict what was going to happen in either case as you can’t know what such silent voters will do.
Which is why I am not going to try now. All I’ll say is that if those silent SNP2019 do turn out, it will be really, really bad for the union. If they don’t, it will only be pretty bad.
We are the diehards. Most are not.
_______
From the Gorbals? 🙂
I also wear my Dugger epithet with pride!
Replying to proudcybernat @ 2.14pm.
I have despaired, over many years, at the fact that ANY Scots are taken in by Sarwar and Baillie – surely they cannot be so naive?
It’s mainly people who identify as British in whole in part that vote for British parties.
These days Scots mainly vote for Scottish parties.
Very interesting article:
https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2024/06/20/chris-mccorkindale-and-aileen-mcharg-the-territorial-constitution-and-the-2024-uk-general-election/
Labour front bench going on about underfunding of the NHS by the Scottish Government what a pair of brass necks. Question I put to all unionists – if the SG can mitigate the bedroom tax, the 2 child cap, more police officers, GP’s and Dentists per head of population, provide fee free education and free prescriptions on less than 50% of the revenue Scotland generates how come Wm need austerity when they have all the financial levers – nobody can give me a credible answer.
Labour are in charge of devolution in Wales and the complaints against the UK government that the SNP make are the same complaints made by the Labour government in Wales
The Labour branch in Scotland are despicable liars and frauds pretending to the Scottish electorate that what they cannot do in Wales the SNP should accomplish in Scotland
On a weekly basis Welsh FM Mark Drakeford chastised the government in Westminster over the exact same issues of underfunding
The SNP Scottish government has done what it can until it can do no more, our government does not exist to endlessly mitigate deliberate bad decision making in England
If people in Scotland vote British Labour who will they turn to to mitigate for what they are about to do? The SNP!
And the blame will begin again due to lack of scrutiny by the electorate of the stupidity they’re about to inflict upon themselves
Throughout history England has been successful in making Scotland argue with itself creating the disunity they have used for hundreds of years
Ladies and gentlemen of Scotland I give you the most parasitical nation on earth for hundreds of years, racist robbers thieves and murderers of 65 nations around the globe, thrown out of every other country they occupied, yet still there are people in Scotland who think they’ll change their habits of conquest to being civilised and fair
Vote British Labour get English imperialism racism sectarianism and play the continued victims too pathetic to tell them to Fu*k off
Well said
Labour on 36% in the latest UK Yougov. That’s why I said the 35% from People Polling did not look like an outlier, but in line with an emerging pattern.
I’ll move a few more pennies onto 35% lab on the day, possibly lower.
Also, that Savanta for Scotland that’s 6 days old takes my ‘untested + outliers‘ Scottish trend to it’s highest SNP yet, and clearly up, just like the other set of ‘tried and tested, not too bad, just underestimate the SNP by few% combined‘ (IPSOS, Yougov, Survation).
When you have two groups of poll results which agree withing the group, but with not the other group, you treat them separately as you are working with apples and pears. You will get nonsense tying to average values, but you can get somewhere averaging the lead, as while both groups may show different absolute numbers, they tend to show the same trends.
We have a set which comprises R&W and Savanta, which are uncalibrated for Scotland. They agree well with Panelbase / Norstat, which needs 7-8% added to the SNP to match election results from final polls where turnouts started off very low. All polls suffer in such situations (2019, 2011), but Panelbase is woeful in them.
So a poll that seems not great is actually in line with everything else when you compare apple with apple.
I see Richard Murphy has an anti-SNP and anti-Alba puff piece on behalf of the Green party, in the increasingly Green National. It’s not worth a linky.
The National has the story about the Tories in Douglas Ross’ new constituency desperately trying to remove any candidate who might drain their votes. If Reform’s 11% is added to the Tory vote then they get to 38% + any Labour voters who are pro union.
Tories urge Reform to suspend candidate over ‘f*** the royals’ comment
https://archive.ph/wnLgu
Weird that I agree with a Reform candidate on something.
Yes – I hope Reform stand their ground – which is also weird.
I’d do anything for Scotland but I won’t do that
i can’t get my head around why Ross thinks it is any of his business. Holding republican sentiments isn’t a crime and over the years there have been republicans in most parties. Reform seems quite Tory but they are also quite Ayn Rand Libertarian and might well have members with little time for privileged elites.
Ross channeling his inner Putin and trying to remove rivals. He’s already stabbed the sitting Tory in the back.
I see the Holyrood “authorities” are investigating the SNP over their campaign spending
So predictably sleazy tactics from the British once again
C’mon polis, get out the murder tent
An anonymous complaint that someone used Holyrood stamps for the Westminster election. How on earth will they determine which stamps were which?
Will no doubt feature in a Panorama special.
My impression so far of this whole campaign by all the parties is that it is very low key with very low spending. My local SNP branch is out delivering leaflets by hand. I’ve had one Tory leaflet, one Labour one and a couple of SNP ones and that is it. SNP have had street stalls not seen sight nor sound of other candidates.
Hoping to get my postal vote tomorrow and when I do I will fire it straight back with a vote for the SNP and that is this election done for me.
The Reform PPB must have been the cheapest ever made.
I’m East Dunbartonshire and you could fill two wheelie bins with Lib Dem literature, no policy just anti SNP
you can guarantee the smears, lies and obfuscation about the SNP will continue unabated until we actually get independence
The most recent Scottish panelbase / Norstat has unionist parties on 32.6% of the total electorate. They got 36.2% in 2019.
Unionism is going backwards. That’s how Yes support is up.
SNP support operates completely independently of unionists. Green does too. These parties operate in Scotland, the unionists in Britain.
Scots no longer wish to be part of British politics, so are not engaged with it. What is there to engage with? They’re never going to vote unionist, so what is the point in even paying any attention to the campaign? With English folk revolted by what’s on offer, how are you going to get Yes Scots excited?
But this is a British election so the brits are measurably engaged. The polling reflects this.
However, do not rule out Scots going out and voting SNP. Quite a lot did last time without warning, even though for 3 years the press had told them 2017 meant the dream was dead and ‘hey, the polls say so!’. Same for 2011, when Scots were coming home to Labour and 2010 + polls proved it.
Disengagement does not mean not voting.
Yes Scots do get engaged when they see an opening. If the SNP pulled of an unexpected nice win, you could see the polls suddenly change massively as Scots felt it was game on again for iref2. That is exactly what happened after 2019, leading to the historic Yes party majority of votes on the biggest turnout ever in 2021, something the polls clearly showed. The day that Holyrood took over as the parliament Scots saw as where Scotland’s future lies.
So we shall see, but the polls clearly say that unionism will get less votes than last time again, adding another point to a trend going back to the 1960’s.
‘For 2 years’ (2017-19)
Latest Labour UK share of total electorate with change on 2019:
21.3(-0.3)%.
Honestly, worth a punt on Labour getting less votes than last time. I’m going to place a bet on this. I imagine the bookies would smile and take your money.
After all, Labour must be overwhelmingly tipped to win.
Make of this statement what you will, but this morning on Radio 4 an announcer (with a Scottish accent) informed listeners that there would be an upcoming programme looking at the possible impact of the ‘smaller nations’ on the outcome of the GE. Oh dear, will we small people prevent the ‘biggest nation’ getting the Govt it wants? Highly unlikely, of course, but the framing of the announcement rather rattled me. We’ll have to be put back in our boxes if we upset the English apple cart.
Meantime, here in the north of the north of North Britain, no fewer than 4 leaflets behind my door – Reform (are you kidding, Nigel Farage?), Labour with a parachuted in personage from Lewisham, and LibDem with no fewer than two. One from the recent guy whose fortnightly mutterings come to us from London HQ quoting English NHS stats and a rather puny little black and white one from the ‘Scottish LibDems’. What’s that about? Has someone somewhere noticed that some of us are noticing what’s going on?
Regardless of which Party, they all come with the same message. Help us get rid of the SNP and we’ll make the NHS great again. England calling!
I’m Aberdeen South and have had exactly one piece of literature.
A card from the SNP.
Through the door.
NO postage stamp used. So 😛 to the Herald!
Have not had anything from SNP in Stirling constituency. Have had a letter from LibDems & my husband got one too – both delivered by the postman. Couple of leaflets from Labour put through the door but person delivering them did not knock.
The Daily Redcoat has an exclusive, messages have been leaked to it that SNP staffers have been using “Holyrood stamps” for the General election. I suppose it is a bit different from “there’s been a murder”.
Is this all they’ve got – classifying using postage stamps as “misuse of public funds”?!
Dearie me…
looking at this chart, this story is not going to disappear any time soon
https://twitter.com/stephenkb/status/1803802474408456443
5,000 bets?
How many people did Sunak let this slip to.
The volume of bets is in £’s so £5000 total staked the day before the election.
Okley Doakley, I know little of these things 🙃
Are you SNP? Watch out, the boys in blue could be coming for you. See Sturgeon and hubby, Salmond before them…
https://archive.is/CR4sA
Surveys: pollsters ply a lively trade in cash for questions
Enjoying this app? Would you recommend us to a friend? In your own words, how satisfied are you with our service? Data gatherers subject consumers, employees and voters to a constant barrage of questions. This suggests it is easy to carry out surveys.
But continuous quizzing causes fatigue. Privacy concerns make people cautious about answering detailed, personal questions. Response rates have plummeted in some cases.
The problem is acute for government statisticians. The response rate to the UK’s labour force survey has dropped from 38.5 per cent pre-pandemic to 15 per cent. Britain’s Office for National Statistics had to skip its usual publication of the jobs data in October.
Read the FT article. Would have commented on it that I also do not answer surveys on purchases, as it is usually just data mining.
But to comment I would have had to sign up, and give up personal info…………..
“Dear members on the Tory Appreciation Key Executive. Perhaps some of you bet on political matters, such as the date of the next General Election. If you happened to bet on, say, the 4th July and won a few quid if you were right, we’d be delighted if you donated half of it to party funds. Yours faithfully, etc. etc.“
I’m not a lone voice in the wilderness. Hardly someone I look up to, but he’s been through the polling wars before.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/06/20/alastair-campbell-casts-doubt-on-uk-opinion-polls.html
‘Something’s going very wrong’: Alastair Campbell casts doubt on UK opinion polls
Alastair Campbell, Labour’s former director of communications, says he does not believe the Conservative Party will be “virtually wiped out” in the upcoming general election — despite what recent opinion polls indicate.
Didn’t Maggie say something similar when Labour looked like they were on the ropes. Perhaps the two main parties like to keep the ball to themselves.
Hes right, the seat projections are very suspect for example if you had a seat in a MRR that came out like this:
Party A: 37%
Party B : 38%
Party C: 25%
The MRP will show party A as winning – but with only 1pp in it when it is too close to make any type of prediction. It is made worse by the headline figures being based on the mid point of the range of outcomes – giving more variability.
Having said that i think the headline vote shares are going to be pretty close to what they are now – its how the vote shares translate into seats that is going to be the difference.
The More In Common MRP has Labour winning the seats of Dundee Central and Broughty Ferry & Arbroath from the SNP. I’d put the chances of that happening as being very close to zero.
Dundee and the towns along the coast to Arbroath are very strongly Yes and SNP supporting, if they do go to Labour I’ll walk the Tay Bridge with nothing on but a hat and sandals whistling God Save the King!
Speaking for many citizens in the Tayside area , let’s all hope that scenario is avoided ! LoL !
Oh I don’t know.
It’d be a day out… ROFL
It also falls down unless tactical is implemented. However, that is very hard to do.
The best way is to not prompt for smaller parties on the initial prompt. This is tried and tested. Is not perfect, but does tend to improve predictions.
In Scotland, polls now and for the last term are not comparable because many pollsters started prompting for the smaller parties like Alba and the Greens post 2019 in an attempt to general less reliable results. Presumably.
Certainly brings the SNP share down, which is desirable for headlines.
Similar applies to England. How much reform will actually turn out Tory tactical? How much Green will become Lib/Lab?
In a poll you don’t have to be tactical, you can say who you support and the pressure of smaller parties high in the polls is the only way you can hope to influence the two cheeks. If you actually vote e.g. Green, Britain bins your vote as it does not do democracy. However, Farage seemingly making big inroads does have both of the cheeks going right wing chasing him, so the pressure is working. Worked for the brexit ref too.
Even recently, in some of worst polls for the SNP on low turnout projections due to SNP 2019 voters disengaged, the combined Yes party share is within variance the same as 2019, but when it’s split 3 ways, then you get silly seat numbers. I’ll eat my bunnet if 16% vote small parties under FPTP, which is what some MRPs have come up with of late. It’s nonsense, for the birds, and that’s before MRPs take too long, so are no use in a campaign.
Makes for headlines though!
I am now thinking Labour could get less than 35% on the day. Another morning another poll showing them down. Wiki has them 5% down now and crossing the 40% mark heading to the upper 30’s. If the same happens to Starmer as happened to popular Blair, 40% in final polls would become 33% on the day. The locals for me were a better barometer than polls.
Similar applies to England. How much reform will actually turn out Tory tactical? How much Green will become Lib/Lab?
The Lib ‘tactical voting’ in places like south west London, South West England seems real. Of course its not really tactical voting, its more voters that the Libs lost in 2015 returning to them.
The Greens are getting hurt by left wing / anti Starmer independents. You can see that in the candidate lists. Some seats have the Greens and 2 or 3 left wing / anti Starmer independents. That looks like it will result, as and example, that rather than the Greens getting 10% in a seat it will end up with the Greens getting 5% with the independents splitting the other 5% between them.
Of course Reform is the big one. Are they going to match their polling? On past performance you would say no and they are going to end up around UKIP 2015 in the 12% area. But the Conservatives have never been as unpopular with the right (or electorate as a whole) as they are now, so maybe they will end up pushing up to 15% or so.
Either way the Conservatives are going to loose alot of seats. The level of Reform vote nationally and how that vote is distributed will be the main factor if they end up with 150-200 seats or <150 seats.
Finally looks 99.9% certain that the Conservatives will poll below 30% in a General Election for the first time in their history.
Just watched The Leader’s Question Time ”debate” . John Swinney was VERY good – despite being interrupted by F. Bruce before he had finished his VERY FIRST ANSWER ! (A new record for Fi Bruce , surely ! )
Yet he seemed to get warm applause on many occasions – quite good for an audience in York!!
Time Bruce was replaced, she is horrendous (and getting worse!).
I presume its Mid Dunbartonshire you are now in Dr J due to the boundary changes. I have been out several times over past couple of weeks delivering leaflets for the Snp. They were all hand delivered. One Lib Dem one may have been hand delivered to me rest were through the post. All were printed in England too. How would postage stamps from Hollyrood be used by Snp in the GE. Are any Snp Msps standing to be an Mp?. Don’t think so but Douglas Ross and Stephen Kerr are. As usual the media blame the Snp.
As for the Lib Dem leaflets they are full of inaccuracies and untruths. I would not trust Susan Murray their candidate to run a raffle. A lot of her literature says she is a business woman also involved in running charities. Well all I can say me and work colleagues were not impressed by what she had to say on online conference couple of years ago. What she spouted re Local Authority Housing Services bore no resemblance to reality.
Oops above was in reply to Dr J’s post up thread at 8. 59pm
I ‘ve never understood how a party like the Liberal Democrats can afford to spend more money than any other party on constant leaflet postage week after week, even out with the voting season, who pays for these people?
There’s always some people will say “The SNP had a majority for Indy in 2016, with 56 out of 59 MPs and had a mandate for Independence, but did nothing with it” or something like that. And go on to say they’ve done nothing in the last 10 years either.
Well, did they have a mandate for Indy in 2015?
I don’t think so, not according to their manifesto. Taking page 1 of the 2015 manifesto (actually numbered 3 in the pdf after a cover and inside cover), what you get is this:
“My vow is to make Scotland stronger at Westminster.” with a whole page of stuff in Sturgeon’s foreword.
https://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/ukmanifestos2015/localpdf/SNP.pdf
The manifesto was about promises made during Indy Ref, and implementing Smith. As outlined in here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32380783
Compare to the 2024 SNP Manifesto, where page 1 (numbered 3 in the pdf) simply says:
“VOTE SNP FOR SCOTLAND TO BECOME AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY” in about size 60 font (possibly sans serif) with nothing else on the page. As big as can be made and still print on portrait A4 within margins and reasonably formatted.
I think activists – and the SNP itself – needs to point this out for the benefit of “apathetic” SNP voters. The SNP fact check needs to fact check social media active Indy supporters, not just the Unionists.
There’s a lot of lying going on out there, by a very few.
Oh. And this is a dirty election. Filthy. Which some might see as a good sign for Indy 🙂
Not sure if any spotted the SC decision over an oil well at Horsehill in Surrey, it’s significance for the Rosebank development etc., and how it completely destroys one of the favoured attack lines against the SNP in the media.
The judgement in effect backs SG policy that any new oil development must be examined on a case by case basis with a full audit of it’s climate impact from use of the product….
It appears the hearings over Rosebank and the new Cumbrian coal mine were stayed pending this judgement, such is it’s significance….
The wording is almost word for word SNP current policy but no journalist seems very keen to mention this
Well said my friend.
2 weeks now since we’ve had a reliable, past election calibrated poll in Scotland. Our two uncalibrated / unreliable showed SNP up to new highs, same for Yes.
Labour now fallen below 21.3% of total UK electorate. Seriously, they could end up with less votes than last time and low 30’s share. Still win, but without any popular mandate and deeply unpopular from day 1.
This is ideal for indy as it completely undermines Starmer’s mandate. He’s not going to get one for England never mind Scotland it seems. SNP + Greens have a solid one for Holyrood, good to 2026, and a new request for iref2 can be made by Scotland’s PR elected government.
And that’s the key. The request doesn’t come from Scotland’s MPs, so ultimately getting a majority of these is simply a bonus. The request for a section 30 will come from the Scottish people under PR via Holyrood, their government.
Rishi Sunak keeps banging on about the ECHR being a foreign court and he will withdraw from it rather than put their decisions before *his country*
The Supreme court is a court set up by England post act of union that Scotland and Wales were never consulted on nor party to, so it’s a foreign court then isn’t it
Plus the *country* that Sunak refers to *Britain or UK* is not and never has been a country, Britain it’s a concept country created by a cabal of people that decided to rename England Scotland and Wales something they are not with their own invented flag and documents to represent it
Adolf Hitler copied the same format, why is he bad but the British good, I’m not sure the British murdered any less than the mad German guy
By dictionary definition, the supreme court is a foreign one. Sits in England with English judges, so foreign. England is a foreign country just like France, Ireland or the USA are with respect to Scotland.
foreign
/ˈfɒrɪn/
adjective
1. of, from, in, or characteristic of a country or language other than one’s own.
“foreign currency”
There are Scottish judges on the UK Supreme Court just as there were when it was the Law Lords in the House of Lords.
The current President of the UK Supreme Court is Robert Reed. He became President in 2020.
It’s still a foreign court with foreign judges applying foreign laws from a foreign country. I understand when dealing with Scottish cases, foreign English judges still sit on the panel.
The Megrahi trial was an example of a Scottish court sitting in another country. For the time of trial, Scotland’s legal jurisdiction applied there, meaning it was not foreign soil, but Scottish.
Joe Biden is and Irishman
Here’s my PoP for the UK parties as share of total electorate planning to back them.
This is not rocket science. If you take certain to vote levels for past elections in final polls and compare to actual turnouts, you find the latter is 0.91 times the former UK wide. Polls always have more voters in them than the general public. If I’d applied this in the last couple of elections to final polls, I would obviously have been absolutely spot in my projection.
So right now, turnout projection is around 52%, and Labour have less backing than 2019 in terms of real voters per capita.
Now certain to vote levels generally shoot up for elections in the weeks before them. So far, this has not happened meaningfully, and my turnout projection remains desperately low.
What a f**king embarrassing shit-show for Starmer if he gets into number 10 on less votes that Labour’s worst defeat since 1935. No mandate whatsoever, compounded by FPTP.
It would signal that the UK political system was utterly broken, and that the end of union as a political entity was nigh.
I think John Swinney is doing a grand job of the debates, interviews and answering questions. I’ve just made another donation now that Independence is mentioned boldly on the first page of the manifesto
I think people like his quiet reasoned “adult in the room” image, and he doesn’t talk at people with pointy fingers he opens his hands outwards bringing people in
If you were being over picky maybe his fluidity of speech might be better, but it fits his demeanour so not I feel a big issue considering he’s usually up against shouty style aggressors that these days folk are less accepting of in politics
Had leaflets from the Tories, SNP and Libs here in Gordon & Buchan.
The SNP leaflet was the only one that had full on party branding; both Tory and Lib tried to hide themselves, looking more like they were independents of some form.
Nothing from Labour. Seems they don’t care enough about Scotland to campaign here. At least so far.
It’s so surreal watching unionist celebrate the impending death of the British Conservative & Unionist party; the party of UK unionism.
It’s like unionists in the N. of Ireland getting all excited about the DUP/UUP/TUV being wiped out in favour of the SDLP (pro-reunification sister party of Labour), SF etc.
Labour have never been a solid unionist party. Certainly their supporters are not; 31% Yes in poll now (Lab 2019). Their politicians try to be, the British ones anyway, but it was Labour that set up the 1979 and 1997 devo refs, something that proper British unionists deeply opposed, including the Scottish Tories and DUP in the N. of Ireland. This is because many within their ranks are Scottish before they are British, with plenty having voted Yes in 2014.
So no, if the union is what matters to you above all, you should be freaking that its ‘no surrender’ loyalist stalwart defenders are about to all but wiped out in Scotland, and totally hammered in England. What’s worst, is that in the latter, they may replaced by an English nationalist party. Not only that, but Starmer has been purging the post-war consensus pan-British social democratic left from his party in favour of the English nationalist centre right in response.
So if you desire independence, sit back and watch the coming death of British conservative unionism on both sides of the border, accompanied by the rise of out and out English nationalism. This marks the beginning of the end for the UK. If the SNP do well, then hey hey, cherry on top of an already nicely iced Yes cake!
Big picture people. Big picture.
Interesting
Of course constituency polls have a much high MoE than national polls (5-6% rather than 3%) but even with that health warning it still shows:
2) Tactical voting.
Now of course even the Greens don’t think they will win in North Herfordshire ! But it shows that when a parties vote share drops below a level that FPTP effects very unproprtuantly and you have tactical voting on top virtually every seat becomes a marginal, hence why Sunak is campaigning in places with >15k Conservative majorities – the Conservative data is showing that these once safe seats are at risk.
Of course there will be anti Labour tactical voting going on, but, as mentioned above its fragmented. If there was a equivalent of Reform on the left for the left wing anti Labour vote to rally around Labour would be having the same problems as the Conservatives – but there isn’t so they are not.
Well, the good news is that Scottish data continue to show a close correlation between SNP and turnout projection. If this edges up, all goes to SNP in line with elections going back to 2011.
Combining UK and Scottish data, as previously noted, a 60(-8)% turnout could deliver 45% SNP, and that’s without any Green/Alba tactical. We are sitting at 57% and my PoP suggests 37-38% SNP of late + Green + Alba, so close to the 2019 total now. With no reliable / calibrated Scottish polls in 2 weeks, we are working with UK polls for now, and a lot of these are needed to get some sort of average value.
SNP focus should be on getting folks out to vote. No need to be despondent. Just turn out and job done. The unionists are very weak, it just seems they’re strong, but it’s an illusion. On them, they fail.
The good news is that SNP voters are the least likely to change their mind / the most determined to vote for their chosen party, courtesy of ISPOS Scotland.
Not a surprise really given that unionist voters on both sides of the border are badly disillusioned with unionist parties. British Scotland is after all, something of a microcosm of wider Britain. If you removed the SNP and Greens from our polls and renormalised, you’d be looking at something very similar to a UK-wide poll.
So folks, tell everyone you know to get out and vote SNP. This election is not a foregone conclusion at all is what polls say. It will be if you sit on your behind though. That would hand Labour seats yes, but no mandate for them.
Arrogant English nationalist Tory scum incoming to No 10.
He too, like dross, is a thoroughly nasty individual.
https://x.com/i/status/1804127717962428664
If we don’t stamp this nonsense out now, all Scots will become second class citizens (if we’re not already).